Court records

Each case brought to court was recorded in the court docket. Entries in the court docket are chronological and contain the case number, date of application, name of the party that brought the case before the court, a short description, date when the issue was handled, and a registration mark to distinguish the matter. In the beginning, everything was recorded in one book; beginning in 1855, civil and criminal matters were maintained separately. Case files were marked with the number corresponding to the court docket entry. Since the original files were usually discarded, the court dockets are often the only source of information about old cases. In 1897, court dockets were replaced by a system of court registers; a special book was maintained for each agenda item, where the case was reported including its verdict.

Alphabetical indexes were maitained for court dockets, where the cases, along with the subject and its corresponding case number are sorted according to the name.

Samples

Faq

Court docket 1864 (District archive Vsetín, German language)

This is an example of the court docket from the district court Vsetín. The last entry number 1753 informs about Bernd Smetana being denounced by gendarmerie for serving bootleg brandy.